"The Eternal Quality of Aesthetic Joy": Laura Andreson and Her Legacy

This exhibition brings to light the seminal impact that Laura Andreson had on the Southern California clay movement, contemporary sculpture, and design, both as an educator at UCLA and overall innovator in ceramic forms and surfaces. About Determined and ahead of her time, Andreson formed the ceramics department at UCLA in 1934 and it was one of the first in the country. Through 1970, she fostered and helmed the program as it flourished. It was integral to the legitimization and rebirth of ceramics. Exacting and formidable, her mission was to explore the nature of clay and to guide her students to take the medium into new realms. Today, clay is well entrenched in the contemporary art world and although it is the most ancient of art materials, it was not well respected as an artistic medium at the time. Through her harmoniously proportioned forms, technical mastery, and methodical scientific study of glaze and clay bodies, she helped form the modern language of ceramic art. Sculpture Design / Fashion Crafts